Printed Papers

I've used up about 20m of fabric with deconstructed screen printing and I have no more left. I had some left over print paste so I went for it on paper. This time I tried drawing on the screen with a medicine syringe filled with print paste. I love it! I used up all my release paste and I have 2 screens left to go, so another batch is ready for tomorrow so there will be another post on this soon.

Not MORE Prints!

Just a few more deconstructed screen prints for you.

Photo Manipulation

Today we went to the botanic gardens to photograph flowers. I've played with the posterize tool in PhotoShop. I love the bright colours and painterly effect. I hope to think of a way to incorporate these into an art piece.

A Few More Prints

Here's a few more deconstructed screen prints. They are not coming out as bright as I would like so I have a few more experiments to do. Watch this space.

Melting With Cardboard Resist

Today I experimented with using cardboard shapes as a protection from the heat gun.

First I layered up felt and organza and drew around the shapes with the soldering iron to lightly fuse them to the fabric. These shapes are from Scrapmatts.

Next I blasted the fabric with my heat gun.

After pulling off the shapes it looks like this:

Next I pulled off the top layer of organza around the shapes to make them stand out more.

More layers were pulled off and details added with the soldering iron.

Here's another piece using the same techniques:

Experiments in Felt

I recently got myself a needle felting machine (also known as an embellisher or needle punch machine). It looks just like a sewing machine but has 5 needles and no thread. The needles are barbed and mesh the fibres together as they pass through the fabric or yarn.

This is one of my first experiments. In this piece I have used a base of wet felted wool and attached pieces of pre-felt, wool fibres, wool nepps and silk fibres with the needle felting machine. The piece was then free motion machine embroidered before a little hand stitching was added.

Rip, Slash and Burn

Today I decided to take slashing and burning (see previous post) one step further and add ripped paper. I painted some cotton rag paper with Twinkling H2O watercolours before ripping it into strips to show the white core. These strips were attached to the organza and felt base by running the soldering iron along the edge to melt the fabric. After that I used the soldering iron to make patterns and lines on the fabric layers. Some layers of organza were removed in places. Some areas were then slashed with scissors and then blasted with a heat gun to ruffle them up and expose the layers beneath.

Slash and Burn

Today I wanted to see if you can get a fabric chenille effect using a soldering iron instead of stitching and a heat gun instead of fluffing your fabric in the washing machine. I used the soldering iron to fuse together layers of organza and felt. I then slashed in between the fused lines with scissors through all the layers. Once everything was cut I blasted it with the heat gun.